Baeleries' Big Book of Small Things

[prestonhunt]

Baeleries' Big Book of Small Things
More often than not, they are in fact quite large!

Foreword

What follows is a modest attempt to catalogue and describe the myriad creeping, scuttling, and burrowing horrors that populate the deserts and wastelands beyond the edge of charted civilization. Few scholars have braved these hostile sands, and fewer still have returned with useful notes. Where firsthand observation is lacking, this compilation leans on traveller testimony, nomadic folklore, field sketches, and remains retrieved from caravans and corpses.

While some of these beings are little more than pestilent vermin, others are far more dangerous—apex predators, infernal mutations, or aberrations that defy even our most generous biological assumptions. The attentive reader will quickly discover that beneath the dunes lies an ecosystem as complex as it is deadly, one which cannot be understood by surface glimpses alone.

This work was assembled not merely for study, but survival. May it serve as a warning to all who walk the ash wastes, the ruin-buried canyons, and the wind-scoured bones of forgotten empires.

On Naming and Knowing

Names have power. In the desert, to name a creature is not to bind it—but to recognize its shape in the world's great weaving. Each of these beings bears three names: the first speaks to its broader kind, the second to its nature, and the third to its form or purpose within the greater whole. These names are drawn from old tongues, campfire tales, and the whispers of those who've survived an encounter. Where knowledge frays, we mend it with story. Where certainty fails, we trust the pattern. This naming is not rigid, but a living thread, meant to guide the wanderer, the witness, and the wise alike.

Creepy Crawlies of the Known World

Ceratopogonidae

They rise in veils and vanish in screams. Tiny devils with hollow mouths and hungers vast as skies. You don't see them until they've already fed.

Ash Blowflies
Ceratopogonidae Cineres Letalis
These stinging flies originate from the toxic barrens of the Great Ash Waste. Their bites cause fevered sleep, dehydration, and organ failure. Operate in rapid spirals, clouding visibility. Entire caravans have vanished to a hum and a whimper.
 
Death Midge Swarm
Ceratopogonidae Minuta Venenum
Tiny midges with a paralytic sting and overwhelming swarm behaviour. Especially dangerous when multiple clusters converge. Known to pursue light and heat signatures. Travellers often carry smoke pots or volatile oils to deter them—usually too late.

Ctenizidae

Spinners of shadow and silence, these spiderkin dwell in cracks of time and stone. Their silk binds more than flesh—it binds memory. To cross their threads is to stir something old and watching.

Bone Spider
Ctenizidae Ossiphaga Imbrium
Woven from death and command, this necrotic mockery moves not with instinct, but purpose. Its joints creak like old doors, and its gaze seems borrowed from something long gone.

Common Ettercap
Ctenizidae Vulgare Communis
Stringy and sullen, the common ettercap lives in the low boughs and undercrofts of stone. It tends web and kin with plodding diligence. When disturbed, it strikes with crude tools and shrieks that call no kin but silence.

Crystalline Spider
Ctenizidae Umbra Crystallus
Nocturnal hunter with chitin like glistening glass. Said to reflect light in hypnotic patterns, confusing prey and predators alike. May shatter when struck, releasing splinters like a trap.

Dire Desert Spider
Ctenizidae Somnum Exterrer
Born of dreamless burrows and silence, this giant predator waits beneath the sands, its breath hushed, its web a funnel to finality. Its bite lulls, then paralyzes, granting prey a final moment of stillness beneath the sun.

Ettercap Shaman
Ctenizidae Vulgare Shamanus
There are those who call it priest, and others who name it poison. Cloaked in rags and cunning, the Ettercap walks the places between thought and thread, leading lesser spiders in a slow dance of venom and glyph.

Funnelcap Spider
Ctenizidae Atrox Sors Immanis
A creature of deep cracks and forgotten places. Its funnel is a throat of fate, its fangs guided by a slow and knowing hunger. Strange echoes follow in its wake—chimes that are not wind.

Khiq'shazha Hive Drone, Birthling
Ctenizidae Khiq'shazha Parturii
Malformed cousin of the hive drones, its flesh is soft where it should be chitin, its limbs unsure, its eyes too many or too few. It scuttles not from instinct but from some faint echo of the swarm-memory, lost and deformed.

Khiq'shazha Hive Drone, Swarmer
Ctenizidae Khiq'shazha Minoris
These minute spiders come not singly but in number, chittering like hail on bone. They act in rhythm, in chorus, each one answering to a mind unseen. Swarming and seething, they blanket the careless.

Hunting Spider
Ctenizidae Venator Saltatrix
Leaping without warning from stone or stalk, the hunting spider needs no web—only patience and pressure. Its eyes gleam with uncanny foresight, and its strikes are like dropped hammers. The old word for them is "step-enders," for they are often the last thing a wanderer sees before falling still.

Recluse Spider
Ctenizidae Venator Reclusa
Withdrawn and whispering, this spider weaves no web, but builds a vault. Its venom does not kill quickly—it forgets. Victims found wander for days, unable to speak their own names.

Sand Spider
Ctenizidae Venator Pallidus
Colour of dust, soul of dagger. The sand spider lies beneath the skin of the earth, patient as stone, erupting only when the time is right to strike, to feed, to vanish.

Skull Spider
Ctenizidae Vulturius Totex
These eight-legged omens bear the mask of death upon their backs. Though their venom has long dried to dust, they scurry with unnatural purpose, feeding on the soft bodies of lesser insects and bathing in the fear of those who know their shape.

Desertum

"If it comes in a swarm, run. If it comes alone, run faster."

Wandering Desert Locust
Desertum Vagus Locustae
This scorched and war-hardened locust is often found in vast migrating swarms, stripping whole regions bare of foliage and flesh alike. Individuals are rarely seen intact. Their fractured remains are prized by entomologists and alchemists alike. Some say they carry the memory of every path the desert has devoured.

Formicae

The builders, the soldiers, the swarming truths. Their colonies run deeper than bone, older than maps. Each is a single breath of a many-chambered mind.

Giant Ant Soldier
Formicae Decanus Bellatoris
A chitinous tower of singular purpose. These ants bear jaws like scythes and eyes that shine with command. They do not retreat. The air around them hums with orders unspoken.

Giant Ant Sprayer
Formicae Decanus Vaporis
Bearing swollen thoraxes and chemical glands, these ants unleash choking sprays that cling to skin and vision alike. They guard tunnels with alchemical ferocity, and their scent burns like judgment.

Gigas

Burdened and blessed by armour, the beetles stride and scuttle like living stones. Some gleam like coin, others reek of sap and rot. All wear the desert as their cradle and grave.

Brass Scarab
Gigas Bronzus Ligatus
Smaller and more numerous than their bronze kin, these beetles cluster around ruins and rusted gates. Their metallic hiss resembles a chant, and their movements are often synchronized, as though rehearsed.

Bronze Scarab
Gigas Bronzus Vindex
A sacred glint among the dunes, the bronze scarab moves with solemn dignity. Its carapace reflects the sun in blinding flashes, and its slow advance carries the hush of procession. Said to feed only upon the remains of cursed things.

Colossal Kan'zuzu Beetle
Gigas Kan'zuzu Colossae
A wall of clicking plates, this ancient beetle towers over camels and flattens tents without malice. Said to be drawn to music, or perhaps to silence. Its mandibles crush stone and fold trees.

Giant Horned Dung Beetle
Gigas Oryctes Nasicornis
Priest of refuse, sculptor of the desert's hidden economy. The dung beetle rolls its sacred burden with patience and reverence. Travellers speak of trails marked in waste that lead nowhere—or everywhere.

Rock Beetle
Gigas Petra Testudo
A living boulder. This beetle's shell is mottled like granite and hard enough to blunt picks. It anchors itself with a stubbornness that defies wind and claw alike, only moving when it senses the fall of night or the shift of buried things.

Slicer Beetle
Gigas Seco Sectura
All jagged mandible and lurching intent, the slicer beetle rends through flesh and root with no sense of gluttony—only mandate. Its split-carapace hums with stored heat, as if it remembers the forge that birthed it.

Wrapped Scarab Beetle
Gigas Volutaria Oblitus
Mummified by instinct or curse, this beetle carries a shell encrusted with desert salt and ancient resin. It rolls not dung but fragments of cloth, ash, and bone. Its hiss sounds like whispering rites.

Ixodidae

They come with thirst, not hunger. The ticks of the desert do not bite from wrath or cruelty—but they do not stop. They cling to blood and bone alike, and some claim they burrow into dreams.

Sandworm Tick
Ixodidae Sanquis Magnus
A blister in motion, red with thirst and driven by heat. These vile clingers nest beneath the scales of greater worms, dropping only when prey stirs the dust. Their bite is deep and silent, their grip eternal. Blood does not drip—it is drawn, reverently, to feed the thirst that knows no end.

Libytheinae

They flit like dying prayers on the wind, strange survivors among storms and stones. Wings like windows, bodies like glass. Few see them twice.

Pixie Butterfly
Libytheinae Pyxidanthera Barbulata
A marvel of impossible hue, this delicate wanderer drifts among hot breezes and over cracked clay. Its wings glow faintly in moonlight and shimmer like dew under sun. It is said that to follow one leads to water—or madness.

Scorpioidea

Where the sand hisses and the rocks seem to shift, their tails rise. Born of furnace and venom, their pincers grasp more than flesh.

Ash Scorpion
Scorpioidea Vulcanus Incendiis
Charred of shell and born of firestorms, the ash scorpion walks where others burn. Its sting sears more than it poisons, and its footsteps leave scorched prints across stone. Said to moult only during thunder.

Collosal Ash Scorpion
Scorpioidea Vulcanis Mezskezlus
A titan of chitin and ash, this massive scorpion strides through fire-scorched canyons with thunder in its step. Its claws crush stone, its stinger blots out the sun. No mind behind the eyes—just the will of the burning earth.

Common Scorpiod
Scorpioidea Sahhet Tyrannis
A horror bred from alchemy or war, the Scorpiod's plated limbs echo like drums against the canyon walls. Its claws are large enough to snap bone and peel bark, its mind—if any remains—burns with pain-shaped fury.

Scorpiod Sentry
Scorpioidea Sahhet Custodes
Posted along hive perimeters or atop ancient dunes, these warriors stand silent until provoked. Their eyes reflect distant lightning. They carry little, but their spears sing when they strike.

Scorpiod Seneschal
Scorpioidea Sahhet Seneschal
Bearing authority more ceremonial than tactical, the Seneschal's presence marks the rise of a scorpionic court. They speak in clatters and clicks, issuing decrees none dare ignore.

Scorpiod Savant
Scorpioidea Sahhet Thaumaturge
Bristling with bio-luminescent glands and arcane chitin patterns, the Savant wields forces few understand. Their minds are not like ours, and their gestures sometimes shape the air itself.

Scorpiod Slayer
Scorpioidea Sahhet Secutor
Elite among the warrior castes, the Slayer's task is singular: destroy. Their limbs are sharpened, their blood bristles with ritual ichor, and their foes rarely see the killing blow.

Scorpiod Solidus
Scorpioidea Sahhet Solidus
Heavily plated, unflinching in formation, Solidus are the mailed bastions of the hive-army. Their carapace bears the scorch marks of old wars and strange runes no one remembers carving.

Scorpiod Spitter
Scorpioidea Sahhet Veneficus
Lurking just behind the front ranks, these variants hurl globules of caustic bile from behind the stone phalanx. Their saliva etches trails in the dust, and sometimes in armour.

Scorpiod Swarmling
Scorpioidea Sahhet Minoris
The youngest among the ashkin, these nimble creatures attack in writhing packs, their small pincers clicking in frantic rhythm. Harbingers of larger kin, they serve as scouts and sand-splitters in the dunes' front lines.

Scorpiod Stinger
Scorpioidea Sahhet Sanguinus
Slender and sinuous, these scorpioids bear elongated tails tipped with barbs that pulse before striking. Their venom burns blue, and its bite frays the nerves from within.

Triatominae

Silent as regret, quick as vengeance. The stalkers of heat and blood. Cloaked in stillness until the moment strikes.

Assassin Beetle
Triatominae Cruor Phantasma
The shade in your boot-print. The needle in the campfire's shadow. This beetle's proboscis strikes like a whisper—quiet, quick, terminal. Survivors report fever dreams and black bile. Most don't survive.

Bombardier Beetle
Triatominae Ignis Bellocor
A living mortar. From twin glands it spits caustic flame, igniting the air with clack and hiss. Dunes catch fire. Tents melt. It does not aim—it erupts.

Uropygi

Born of nightsoil and thundercrack, the whip scorpions are dread shape and vinegar breath. They do not dance—they stagger. And yet their gait always ends at you.

Whip Scorpion
Uropygi Desertum Ahkheg
A relic from before fear had a name. It moves sideways in darkness, antennae twitching to taste your tremble. When cornered, it emits a chemical that scorches the eyes and memory both. Folk say it walks between cracks in time.

Vermis

The long ones, the deep burrowers, the sand-tongues. These are not creatures you spot. These are the things that move the dunes behind you, that turn a valley into a maw. You do not find them—they find you, in their time.

Juvenile Worm
Vermis Avidus Infans
Barely born but already seeking, this hatchling churns shallow dunes with instinctive hunger. Its skin is thin and luminous, its tremors delicate—yet already it can swallow a rat whole, bones and all.

Hungry Worm
Vermis Avidus Macilentus
Gaunt and ever-searching, it breaches the earth like a question posed too late. Its gullet is lined with backward spines, and it thrashes not to kill—but to trap. Scarred sand tells of its hunt.

Ravenous Worm
Vermis Avidus Voracis
A monument to appetite. This creature tunnels with seismic purpose, drawn to heat and panic alike. Its emergence is heralded by a collapse of certainty, and it devours not from hunger—but as if compelled.

Giant Sandworm
Vermis Colossus Regalis
Large as a desert steed and twice as stubborn, this worm carves slow trails through the dunes, shedding plates like shale. Its rasping cry unsettles camels and calls wind from still air. Nomads still name it the Sleeper Below, though they now do so with a knowing smirk.

Vesparum

Flyers of wrath and hum, builders of waxen war. Each one is a blade on the wind, a promise of pain, and part of a mind that dreams in hexes.

Hellwasp
Vesparum Charnelii Voxmortis
A wasp grown gluttonous on carrion winds, its droning buzz echoes like a dirge. Its sting delivers not just venom, but visions of the dying it has fed upon. Those stung sometimes do not stop screaming.

Waste Wasp
Vesparum Cinerus Fornax
Drawn to rot and heat, these bloated fliers thrive near middens and corpse piles. Their abdomens pulse with noxious pressure, and they leave behind egg-laced froth that eats through cloth and reason.

Final Observations

The desert does not weep for those it claims. But we may still learn, and through learning, step lightly where others sank. If even these chitinous horrors persist—feeding, burrowing, nesting—then perhaps so might we.

Let the wind strip away your fear. Let the beetles teach you to listen.

--B.B.